Chapter 6
Putting up a very good front to cover her hysteria, Merry stepped into the carriageway, securing the neck button of her tan wool redingote, her gloved fingers slipping nervously against the dark-brown embroidery on her silk collar.
“Such a nice slim neck you have, Miss Wilding,” the village dressmaker had said and added emphasis to her point by cutting Merry’s dresses a size tighter at the neck than Merry would have liked.
This evening the sensation that she was being slowly choked was more intense than ever.
Across the yard Henry Cork was making fast the trunks in the hired mule cart.
The trunks had grown dusty (not that Aunt April would notice such a triviality on this day of all days) from sitting in the yard all afternoon waiting for Henry to rent a cart and load them.
You had to give Henry Cork plenty of time to do a thing.
Merry wandered to the hired carriage that waited, shabby as a workhouse hearse, to convey her to the dock where she would board the British ship that would sail on the dawn tide for England.
One of the carriage horses eyed her curiously.
She raised her hand to gently stroke its friendly nose as Henry caught sight of her and hurried over with the wind lifting his untucked red flannel shirt like a flag to expose the spiky black hairs on his round, chalky belly.
Drooped over his bowed legs were baggy pants of gray sailcloth cinched with a frayed rope, because he doggedly persisted in losing the leather belts Aunt April had generously bought him, one after the other.
No doubt he sold them. Merry had heard him telling one of the kitchen maids what a sad time he had of it, being indentured to a tight old witch who wouldna’ even give him a belt to make himself decent. …
Joining Merry, he said crossly, “The auld vixen, she’s as good as kidnapping you, ain’t she?” A string of tobacco juice escaped one corner of his mouth and ran down his long, grizzled chin.
“Oh, no, Henry,” Merry answered, looking over her shoulder to make sure her aunt hadn’t been following her closely down the stairs.
“That’s not true. We’ll be back next spring—Aunt April promised.
This is something my aunt has wanted for years, Henry.
If she likes, she can stay, and I will come back happy, knowing that I let her have the chance to live in the land of her choice once again.
And besides, it might be a lot different than she remembers it. ”
“Paradise would be a disappointment to her, the way she talks about England,” he said.
“Well, if that happens, she’ll be more content to come back,” Merry ventured.
“Aye, the old besom. Yer old man is likely to load up a dozen men-o’-war and come sailing after you as soon as he gets wind of this.”
“With Achilles, a dozen Argonauts, and a wooden horse?” said Merry. “I’m not Helen of Troy. Father will understand if you give him my letter. You won’t forget, will you?”
“Don’t fret yerself about that now, Miss Merry. I’ll see that he gets it. You’ll have enough to do, keepin’ on yer feet on the wide, wide sea.” There was the sound of a door opening behind them, and Henry winked at her strangely. “Ah, there she is now. She’ll get a going away surprise from me.”
“Henry, what did you do?” Merry whispered, but he had left her already, walking toward her aunt, outstretching his arm in a theatrical gesture to show April where he had strapped the trunks, as if daring her to find fault with his method.
It was too late to ask him. Merry turned to the steps that the groom was letting down for her, hoping that in her aunt’s happy mood even Henry Cork’s devilment wouldn’t be taken too much amiss.
Behind her she heard Henry tell her aunt, “The trunks are on, corded nice and tight like you ordered, ma’am. ”
“Thank you, Henry,” answered April. Her aspect was nearly benign. “And I shall just have to remember at the docks to have Merry’s trunk taken to my room and hers to mine.”
Merry had had a headache all morning, a going-to-England headache.
It was painful, like an open wound with lemon water dripping on it in regular pulses, alternated with a feeling of numbness.
The numbness was fading, the pain returning, and she dimly heard Henry’s voice in the background as she mounted the steps.
“Now why would ye do that, ma’am?” he was saying.
“I don’t know what business it is of yours, Henry Cork, but we changed trunks before packing so Merry could fit the new folding easel and paint pots into the larger trunk.
Now, Henry, when you get back to Fairfield—” And then April added a few more domestic instructions to the long list she had been providing Henry with since they had decided to leave; at last she turned and joined Merry in the coach.
The driver released the carriage brake with a solid clack, and Merry leaned out the window, waving at Henry, forcing herself to wear a smile which she hoped desperately would exude cheer and confidence.
She had expected Henry Cork to be upset about her leaving for England with her aunt; never would she have predicted as the carriage drew her away that Henry Cork would look appalled.
The journey to the docks came to Merry as a series of vivid details splashed against the blunt backdrop of her headache.
The jarring crunch of the wheels in traffic, the jostling stop and start, the high breeze, the shouting of frustrated, traffic-bedeviled grooms ground into her ears.
Disciplining herself, Merry made smiling responses to her aunt’s stream of excited conversation.
Merry hid her tears and her terror inside, like battered islands in the nucleus of a hurricane.
The harbor lay in bitter silence. Everywhere one could feel the effects of the British blockade.
The roads had fallen into disrepair, rutted by erosion in some places and overgrown with weeds and grass in others.
The ghostly, creaking ships stood rotting in their slips, and here and there neglect showed itself in a torn and drooping canvas, a skinned rope that no one had bothered to replace, a board warping in the weather and needing paint.
It was an odd sight in the dying light. Where so recently there had been the scurrying of sailors up the mast and the steady thud and bump of cargo being unloaded, there was only the scurrying of the rats and the lap, lap, lap of water, forlornly trying to tug the empty ships away from anchor out to sea.
The sun dropped as their carriage passed the rows of bare masts, spiking up like the trunks of a burnt forest, to the British frigate HMS Guinevere.
One of the few inhabited ships in the harbor, she rode high at her mooring, stripped as she was of cannon and powder for the diplomatic purpose that had brought her with immunity to this enemy shore.
Flags and special insignia marked her peaceful intent, but still a discreet guard of American soldiers was quartered about her—“for her own protection,” as they say.
The Guinevere rose out of the dark vessels around her, her burning lamps like a festival of lights.
All Merry was to remember later was the blur of the lights, the friendly officers—from the British Navy—handing her down from the carriage with her aunt and helping them to come safely onto the deck of the ship, men with features she could barely distinguish.
Under her feet was a pleasant tug as the moored frigate sidled in the slip; and she said and did what she hoped were the right things in the last painful moments before she was left mercifully alone, with her trunk, in the small cabin that would be her home for the coming six weeks.
The door closed, footsteps pattered away in the corridor outside, and there was a small moment of panic brought on by the realization that she was now properly on the boat.
She rushed over to unbind and throw open her trunk on the vague thought that it might distract her to unpack.
But even unpacking required more than a vague concentration, so when the trunk lid had snapped open and she had lain it back to fall heavily on its hinges, Merry turned from it and walked to the window.
She could see the outline of the city—black and simple geometric figures that rose and fell slowly with the swell of the sea.
There were fog-softened patches of yellow light from the streetlamps, and a low murmur of traffic—now and then a shout and the whinny of a cart horse.
At the end of the dock a circle of light from a lantern picked out the complacent features of Sir Michael, who stood with one boot resting on a coil of rope, indulging in some quietly derisive laughter with two British sailors.
Near to his foot the wind found a trio of withered brown leaves and tossed them playfully into the air before dumping them carelessly on the swell like a spoiled child.
In a carefully covered sconce behind Merry burned a single small flame, its light flinching in shiny, trembling patterns on the window’s rusting metal frame.
She felt a sudden coldness, and the skin on her arms tingled as though a light, flimsy wire had skimmed the surface of the hair there.
She knew as though someone had told her in words that she was not alone.
Her skirt hissed as she spun, staring about her in the tiny room, a bare open cube that held no places that could have hidden another human.
There was nothing but thin, cloudy candlelight and shadows.
Trying to still the foolish tremors of her heart, she took two steps into the room, slowly letting the air slide from her lungs; and for no particular reason she could have named, her gaze fell on a thick, lozenge-shaped shadow that lay like a pile of cinders near the door.
It took her a moment to realize the strangeness of the shadow—there was nothing there to cast it, and it was moving; and as it moved in its territory it moved within itself as well, heaving with life.
Two thousand minutely glistening black and hard-shelled bodies were making their way in well-ordered insectual haste across Merry’s cabin floor.
Afterward she was able to reflect with mild pleasure that she had had the presence of mind not to scream.
She had simply walked from the cabin, sternly repressing a certain gritty distaste as her feet crackled accidentally on a score of stragglers.
Sir Michael had been in the corridor, in conversation with one of the junior officers, who turned and smiled with lush enthusiasm when he saw Merry, his youthful features reddening when Merry told him politely that her cabin was full of ants.
There had been, quite naturally, a good deal of commotion and a good deal of embarrassment later when the ants were traced to a bowl of dusty comfits in Merry’s trunk. In two words, spoken in a sinking voice, Aunt April had laid the matter bare: “Henry Cork.”
Merry’s cabin was unlivable after the liberal application of acrid astringent poisons, laid down to kill the ants.
Aunt April’s tiny cabin was only large enough for her and Betty, her aproned, aging maid; when the truckle bed was pulled out, there was no room to walk.
There were no vacant sleeping arrangements available; and yet Aunt April was nearly stampeded with officers begging to give up their beds for Merry’s comfort.
Sir Michael’s offer carried the day, if only because his were the only quarters not already being shared with another.
Sir Michael handsomely agreed to make himself comfortable in a hammock mounted in the captain’s quarters.
An hour later Merry shut her eyes for the last time that day, wincing against the headache, in Sir Michael’s bunk.
The mattress was rude and lumpy, the stark long-sleeved nightdress she had borrowed from her aunt felt scratchy, the sheets smelled as though the ship’s launderer had too generous a hand with the bleach cup, and the hot skimmed milk the first mate had kindly brought curdled in her stomach.
But the Atlantic Ocean rose and fell beneath the Guinevere like a mother rocking a cradle, and Merry fell almost immediately and blessedly to sleep, with headache intact, her dreams fitful.
She was awakened some time later that night by a noise; and sat up and opened her eyes in a single movement, and found herself staring, from inches away, into a rotund, unshaven, and evilly grinning face.
She never saw the blow that came from behind to end once more her wakefulness, and this time there were no dreams.